Freddie Gibbs

Gary, Indiana's Freddie Gibbs has one of the best voices in rap, a bruised, guttural growl that radiates toughness but also emotion. And Gibbs knows just how to use it: accelerating into double-time speed-raps, crooning low-down choruses, slowly and pointedly telling matter-of-fact stories about smuggling weed in from Canada. So far this year, Gibbs has released two mixtapes, The Miseducation of Freddie Gibbs and Midwestgangstaboxframecadillacmuzik. But with no invasive DJ drops or beat-of-the-moment freestyles, both tapes sound more like albums mixes, comprised as they are of actual songs. And both of them belong on a short list of the best rap albums we've heard this year.

Pitchfork caught up with Gibbs as he recovered from a show the night before in Los Angeles, his new home base.

Pitchfork: You used to be on Interscope. What happened there?

Freddie Gibbs: Basically, the guy that signed me at Interscope left, and he left me there with nothing. Interscope didn't move on the project. They didn't feel the project that I was putting together. It was at the end of 2006 to the end of 2007. I recorded a whole lot of material, actually.

Pitchfork: What percentage of the music from the two mixtapes you put out this year is stuff you recorded when you were on Interscope?

FG: I'd say about 60% of it.

Pitchfork: When you were on Interscope, who were your favorite producers to work with?

FG: I had an opportunity to work with people like Just Blaze; I always liked him throughout that Roc-A-Fella era. I worked with Alchemist. I worked with Polow da Don. I worked with so many different people. All of that was just due to the fact that I was signed to Interscope. If I wasn't signed to Interscope, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to have those producers work with me.

I feel like when I left Interscope, it made me stronger. Now I feel that I can construct the same caliber of music without those big names, without leaning on the crutch of a label. I'm showing people that I can do that on my own, which brings value to me as an artist. I don't have a team of writers coming in here and writing the song for me. There's times when I don't have a singer available to sing hooks for me; that's why I sing a lot of my own hooks. I do what I've got to do to make mine, to fit my sound and myself.

Pitchfork: You've got some big producers on your two mixtapes, but both tapes have a real consistent, solid country-rap type of sound. It reminds me of how albums used to sound in the mid-90s.

FG: Yeah, definitely. I draw a lot of inspiration from that era of rap. That's the type of stuff that I listened to as a child, and that's what I listen to to this day. I'm not really impressed by the new things going on in rap music right now. I pretty much stick to my roots, and you can definitely hear it in my music. I have an appreciation for those who came before me.

Pitchfork: I was looking at your MySpace page, and I thought the list of influences was interesting. You list Tupac and Scarface, who a lot of people claim as influences. But I don't see anybody else claiming Juvenile and N.O.R.E.

FG: Yeah, I love my man Juvenile. I wasn't up on Juvenile before the 400 Degreez shit. When I heard that, I went back, and I was just amazed by the shit that he can do. I think he's one of the most-- probably the most-- underrated rappers.Â Lil Wayne was birthed from that whole Juvenile shit. I think Juvenile had a big role in shaping Lil Wayne into the rapper that he is today. When you're around a rapper that great, how can you not get better your damn self? N.O.R.E. is underrated, too. I love N.O.R.E. I was one of the only niggas in Gary bumping N.O.R.E. I used to fuck with that Melvin Flint: Da Hustler when I was on the bus going to school.

Pitchfork: You're coming off these two mixtapes now, a couple months apart from each other. Where do you go from there?

FG: When I started rapping, I got into it for the respect. I feel the money will come. I just want to keep getting my material out there. If I'm in everybody's face with undeniable music, I think everything will take care of itself. I'm just going to stick to what I do and make the best music I can make. If I've got to do another Midwestgangstaboxframecadillacmuzik, I will until I'm in everybody's face, until I'm the top rap guy. I think I've got the talent and the material and the drive to be next top dude in rap. I don't see nobody in my way that can stop what I'm doing or duplicate what I'm doing.

Pitchfork: What effect do you think being from the Midwest has had on your music? There's maybe some Bone Thugs influence, but I don't hear Common or anything like that in what you're doing.

FG: Yeah. I love Common, too; it's funny that you say that. Bone Thugs, I listen to a lot of their stuff, a lot of Twista, Psycho Drama, Do or Die. In the Midwest, we've got that fast-paced style with our flow. I think we do that better than any other region-- especially guys like Bone Thugs, Tech N9ne, and Twista. They pretty much fathered that style, so to speak. I'm doing my own thing, but I'm still trying to carry that on. When you hear my flow, you know I'm from the Midwest. But, at the same time, I do own thing with my own flow.
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Pitchfork:__ Yeah, you switch in and out of that double time real easily.

FG: Definitely. I think that's something that I do that a lot of rappers don't do and can't do. That's something that I try to flex within a lot of my rhymes. When I do that, I can do a lot of tricky things with that, a lot of different words. Eminem is sick with that wordplay. Listening to him and studying cats like him, he definitely played a roll in putting those words together like that. I'm just trying to stay sharp doing that.

Pitchfork: Being from Gary, how did the death of Michael Jackson affect you?

FG: Michael Jackson affected everybody, worldwide. Being from Gary, it was crazy to be from the same place that Michael Jackson was from. You can drive past his house, the house that he lived in. It's not like it was on the main street, you kind of have to go into the neighborhoods to pass it. But to see that someone can come from the same economic trials you come from and make it that far, it gives you motivation. It should give you motivation, but the problem is that a lot of people in Gary aren't motivated by that. They see Michael Jackson's career spanning worldwide, so he didn't have the time, I guess, to come back to Gary. A lot of people feel like Michael Jackson didn't come back to Gary enough. A lot of people feel like they didn't see enough of him, or see enough of the Jacksons' success within our own city. But it definitely touched the whole city.